People sometimes go to extreme lengths in order to achieve their dream body. This may involve dangerous dieting habits, unhealthy approaches to exercise, or - for a small minority of folks - cosmetic surgery.
These treatments can range from simple wrinkle-eliminating botox injections to complex (and often highly risky) invasive surgeries, but the things that surgeons have on offer really do run the gamut in terms of variety. Statistics from 2016 show that breast augmentations were the most popular cosmetic augmentation performed in the US, with recipients collectively spending more than a billion dollars on getting their chests enhanced.
However, even though more than 300,000 of that specific operation takes place every year - making it a fairly routine procedure for a trained surgeon - people still die on the operating table.
And Heidi Montag was one of them.
The American TV personality has had a number of surgeries in the past, and once endeavored to get 10 augmentations and alterations in just one sitting. Unfortunately, the ambitious procedures didn't quite go as planned, and The Hills star technically died for a minute after her heart stopped.
Speaking to Paper magazine, she recalled how her husband, Spencer Pratt, was told that she wouldn't survive the surgeries.
"My security guards called Spencer and told him, 'Heidi's heart stopped. She's not going to make it'," she said. "And I easily could've. Cutting yourself up isn't something I'd recommend, and Demerol [the medication she was given afterwards] isn't anything to play around with. That's how Michael Jackson died."
All the operations that Montag had were fairly standard - brow lifts, a second breast enhancement, a second rhinoplasty (nose job), ear pinnings, and a chin reduction - but something inevitably didn't go to plan.
However, that was nearly a decade ago now, and Montag has changed her attitude towards cosmetic surgery in the meantime.
Just last year, she gave birth to her first child - a baby boy named Gunner - and is now solely focused on being the best mom she possibly can. In preparation for her little one, she had her size F breast implants removed, and says that her near-death experience made her reconsider a lot of things about herself.
"A lot of positive things came out of that. I had to look at myself in the mirror everyday healing, and be like, 'What did I do to myself? How did I get here? What is going on?' I basically had to hit that rock-bottom moment in my life, to realize what was important to me."
After her botched operations, Montag spent a significant time in recovery. "With that much surgery, I had to have 24-hour nurse care and Spencer didn't want to leave my side," she explained. "I was at a recovery center."
Understandably, an experience like that would be traumatic enough to put anyone off having further procedures done - and Montag says it was a wake-up call about how she was willing to risk her "own life for vanity."
Now, however, she has her family to concentrate on, and she appears to be a whole lot happier for it.